Managing Your Email Subscribers' Expectations During The Holidays

Nov 18 2009

Managing Email Subscriber Expectations During The Holidays

Published by Jordan Lane at 1:03 pm under Industry Trends

The holidays are a time of goodwill, cheer, and full email inboxes. During this time of year, many email marketers struggle to find the correct balance between sending too many emails during the holidays (and therefore experiencing high unsubscribe and abuse complaints) and not sending enough emails (and seeing stagnant sales as a result). I recently saw a Zappos.com campaign that does a great job at helping to solve this issue – they notified their email subscribers about what they can expect to see in their inbox from Zappos.com this holiday season.

This fresh yet simple email explains when Zappos.com will begin their increased holiday email schedule. It also explains on which days the subscriber should expect to receive emails, and then reminds the subscriber to keep Zappos.com in mind for their gift purchasing needs.

Zappos.com, however, does not seem to allow their subscribers to opt-out or opt-down from the holiday specific campaigns. This is a feature I would look at implementing in the near future to mitigate unsubscribes and abuse compaints. Other than that, this is a great idea for many businesses as it keeps the customer informed and treats their relationship with respect.

Nice job!

The subject line of this email was, “Get Ready! A Sneak Peek Of The Zappos Holiday Season Is Inside!” Here is the creative:

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Tags: email schedule, email subscribers, expectations, full inbox, holiday email, holiday mailing schedule, zappos.com

Cyber Monday/Black Friday Forecast for 2009

6 responses so far

6 Responses to “Managing Email Subscriber Expectations During The Holidays”

# The throttle back option | # The eMail Guide - The search engine for eMail marketerson 19 Nov 2009 at 11:01 am

[...] Lane blogged Wednesday about an interesting Zappos marketing eMail he got recently regarding their holiday [...]
# Jimon 19 Nov 2009 at 11:09 am

Hi Jordan,

Interesting post. After reading it I decided to append to it and ponder what I call the “throttle back option”. Love to read your comments on the post here:
http://www.theemailguide.com/blog/2009/11/the-throttle-back-option/

Regards,
Jim Ducharme
Editor
TheeMailguide.com/blog
# Jordan Laneon 19 Nov 2009 at 1:49 pm

Hi Jim –

Thanks for your comments. Let’s see if subscriber notifications like this become more popular this holiday season and beyond.

Best regards,

Jordan
# Rick Braddyon 19 Nov 2009 at 8:35 pm

Excellent suggestion. Setting expectations ahead of the holiday also serves as a “first hint” as to what’s coming – always a good first step in any email campaign.

Thanks!

Best,

Rick
# Managing Subscriber Expectations During the Holidays | Product Launch, Email Marketing Blogon 19 Nov 2009 at 8:44 pm

[...] an excellent post on managing subscriber expectations during the holidays today on the Email Responsibly [...]
# Annaon 08 Dec 2009 at 8:19 am

Great email, but they suffer from the phenomenon of over-exclaiming. All but one of their paragraphs ends in an exclamation mark – leaving the subscriber bereft of endorphins by the end.